


In for the thrill

by goddammit_charlie



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Work In Progress, blood cw, macdennis eventually, murder cw obviously, murder twins, police babies, possibly chardee eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:03:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6150010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddammit_charlie/pseuds/goddammit_charlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dennis and Dee Reynolds grew up together, live together, and kill together. As Philadelphia's finest are on the case hunting the serial killers, Officers Charlie Kelly and Mac McDonald are tasked with keeping out of the way and not screwing things up. This was clearly too much to ask. </p><p>The murder-twins AU that the world has always needed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m imagining this AU happening at about the same time that the series started, so the gang are in their late 20’s. Feedback is very much appreciated!

Julian Stevens pushed a few folded bills at the cab driver, waved away the change and stumbled up the driveway of his sprawling suburban home. If he noticed the front door wasn’t locked, he was too drunk to care. He let himself in, dumped his keys and jacket without bothering to turn on the light, and made his way through to the kitchen with a noisy sigh followed by a belch. He was getting too old to be doing this every weekend, he knew. He needed water, lots of it, and then he was going to piss and go to bed like the middle-aged man he was.

He switched on the kitchen light and froze.

One of the strangers in his kitchen raised a leather-gloved hand in a casual greeting, smiling with dead eyes and too many teeth. A young white man, with curly hair and a thin face with sharp angles. The other stranger, a blonde woman, leaned her bony hips against the counter with her arms folded. She did not smile.

“Who… what are you…?” Julian tried to make his sluggish brain catch up with the situation. He raised his hands and took a step back as the male intruder moved towards him. The man was still smiling, pulling something from his pocket. Julian was so fixed on him that he barely noticed the woman moving in his peripheral vision until she was almost upon him. She seized his wrists in a surprisingly strong grip, twisting his arms down behind him while the man slipped a plastic bag over his head. Through the crinkling clear plastic, Julian watched as the man produced a roll of duct tape. His eyes widened in horror as they wound several layers of tape tightly around his neck, sealing the bag airtight. He opened his mouth to scream but as soon as he drew breath the plastic sucked tight against his lips. With every panicked gasp his vision blurred and darkened, and soon he was slumping to his knees. The last thing he saw was the man’s face, still smiling.

 Dennis held eye contact with their victim long after the eyes returning his gaze had gone glassy and lifeless, the whites blotched red with popped vessels. He had crouched down when the guy fell, to better enjoy the show, and when he finally drew his eyes away he stood up and grinned at his sister. Dee had already lost interest in the cooling body, and was rifling through the wallet she’d found in his back pocket.

 “Dude’s got two platinum credit cards and only like fifty bucks cash,” she muttered with a sneer, pocketing the cash and dropping the wallet with a careless flick of her gloved fingers. It hit the dead man’s hip with a light thud and bounced to the ground.

 “There must be a way we could…” Dennis began, reaching for the wallet.

 “No! Goddammit Dennis, how many times do I have to tell you? Credit cards get traced. Do you want to go to jail?”

 “Alright bitch, no need to squawk at me like that. Jesus.”

 “Oh I’m sorry, am I distracting you from your fucking boner? You’re such a sicko.”

 “And you’re not? Pretend all you like Sweet Dee, I know you get off on this just as much as I do.” Dennis leaned towards her as he said this, his eyes hooded and voice low, and Dee turned away with a scoff of disgust and folded her arms across her chest again.

 By the time they’d finished searching the house for more cash and made sure they hadn’t left any evidence behind, the horizon was just starting to turn grey with the approach of dawn while they walked home. As they climbed the stairs in their apartment building, they heard footsteps and heavy breathing approaching from above. At the next landing their neighbour Gary came into view, lumbering down on his way to an early shift at the hardware store where he worked.

 “Hi guys! Late night, eh?” he chuckled when he saw them. The twins glanced at him but gave no other response. He licked his lips and tried again, “Your hair looks nice, Dee. Ponytail suits you.”

 Dee grunted and shouldered past him, followed by Dennis. Gary turned to watch them go and then continued on his way.

 “Fucking creep,” Dee muttered.

~

Officers Charlie Kelly and Mac McDonald were, as their sergeant liked to say, the foundation of Philadelphia’s police force – meaning that they were at the very bottom and could generally be relied on not to move. They watched with interest as their colleagues rushed around making phone calls to forensic techs and senior detectives, chattering excitedly about the similarities between this murder and a couple of others from earlier in the year – the phrase “serial killer” was being murmured behind closed doors – but as far as the two officers were concerned, this was way above their pay grade.

 “You know Bruce Willis would kick Mel Gibson’s ass in hand-to-hand combat,” Mac was declaring earnestly.

 “Yeah but with Glover backing him up? It’d be two on one, man. I’ve gotta go with Lethal Weapon on this one.” Charlie countered.

 “Seriously, dude? I bet Bruce benches more than…”

 Mac was cut off mid-sentence by the approach of the precinct’s captain, and he and Charlie jumped to their feet as the captain made a beeline towards them.

 “Hi there Captain Lewis!” Charlie raised his hand in an awkward salute, fumbling and half-bowing in an obsequious scramble. The captain looked him up and down disdainfully and turned to Mac, who was standing ramrod straight with his most serious expression.

 “Officer McDonald,” he began.

 “Sir yes sir!”

 “How many times must I tell you officer, it’s not necessary to shout that every time I…”

”Sorry sir!”

 “Goddammit McDonald, stop interrupting me and sit down! Both of you!” When both officers had returned sheepishly to their seats, Captain Lewis continued. “We’ve got the major crimes division coming in to handle this murder – we might even end up with the Bureau involved if they decide it’s linked to the others. That means the precinct is going to be full of very smart people doing very important jobs.”

 Charlie and Mac stared expectantly, wondering where he was going with this. The captain sighed.

 “I don’t want you two hanging around getting in the way when the detectives get here,” he explained. “I’m going to assign you to a traffic operation until things settle down a bit.”

 “Traffic?” Mac couldn’t hide the disappointment in his voice.

 “You’ll enjoy it, I’m sure. Getting out of the station for a while, fresh air, radio on – it’s not that bad.”

 “But traffic cops never get to make any cool arrests,” Mac pouted.

 “Jesus Christ. When was the last time you made _any_ arrest, McDonald? Anyway, this isn’t up for discussion. Get on with it.”

 Charlie grinned as the captain walked away.

 “This is gonna be great, Mac! You and me, chilling in a cruiser all day, nobody around to tell us what to do…”

 “Charlie, we’re being tidied out of the way because they don’t want the big guys to meet us! This isn’t a good thing, dude!”

 “Well, maybe we don’t want to meet them either. It’s a good thing if we make it good, bro.”

 Mac rolled his eyes and led the way to the parking garage to find a squad car.

~

 Dennis was not having a good day. The supermarket where he worked had been short-staffed so he’d been forced to diminish himself to bagging groceries alongside his usual superior role as cashier, and some bitch had complained about him putting her eggs at the bottom of the bag. Stressed, demeaned and furious, he felt his reaction had been no more than proportionate, but his managers had not seen it the same way. As soon as the customer had left with a stack of complementary coupons and yolk still dripping through her hair, Dennis had been promptly fired from his third job in six months.

 He arrived back at the apartment still muttering darkly, and swung the door open without needing his key.

 “You forgot to lock the door, shit-for-brains!” he yelled into the quiet apartment. “Dee?”

 A muffled thud from the bathroom caught his attention. He locked the door behind him (this was one of the crummiest neighbourhoods in the city, only a moron would leave it unlocked) and moved towards the closed bathroom door, calling again:

 “You in there, Dee? You have got to hear about this fucking nightmare shift…”

 He paused as the bathroom door slowly opened and Dee’s face peered out at him, ghostly pale and wide-eyed.

 “Shit, Dee, are you sick or something?” He took a step back just in case.

 “Um… we have a little bit of a problem.” Dee’s voice was hushed and a little hoarse.

 Dennis scowled impatiently and pushed past her into the tiny bathroom. Blood, a lot of it, was cooling in sticky pools on the tile floor and drying in vivid arcs across the wall. Slumped in the bathtub, cold and grey and very dead, was a familiar figure.

 “I um, I _may_ have killed Gary.”

 Dennis was silent for a long moment, breathing slowly through his nose and staring at the hefty corpse filling the tub. Then he turned to Dee with a snarl that had her shrinking back instinctively.

 “Our neighbour? Our fucking _next door neighbour?_ What the fuck is wrong with you?”

 “Look, I didn’t mean to do it, okay? It was self-defence. He invited himself in to see if he could fix the shower and he, he _attacked_ me.”

 “Gary the asthmatic vegetarian attacked you?”

 “Well, maybe not violently, but he did get handsy.”

 Dennis raised an eyebrow wordlessly.

 “Okay, so he put his hand on my back. Briefly. It was gross though! He was trying to hit on me and staring at me with those pathetic bloodhound eyes and just, _ugh._ ” Dee shuddered.

 “Dee, using lethal force against awkward flirting isn’t going to count as self-defence in court!”

 “Goddammit Dennis, I know that! I messed up, alright? Are you going to help me out here or what?”

 Dennis needed to think. He sat down on the closed lid of the toilet, head in his hands, while Dee grabbed a cloth and started trying to mop up some of the blood. All she managed to do was smear it around a bit and gag at the congealed clots.

 “They’ll investigate us,” Dennis muttered without looking up. “When he gets reported missing, or the body shows up. We’re his next door neighbours. I’ve got a criminal record and you’ve been institutionalised – we’re the first ones they’ll look at.”

 “Not if they don’t know he’s dead! What’s the best way to hide a body? C’mon, you must have googled this at some point.”

 “There isn’t a one hundred percent perfect way. No matter what we do, there will be evidence if someone looks hard enough for it.”

 “So we don’t give them a reason to look hard.”

 Dennis shook his head and lapsed into frowning silence. After a few minutes, he looked up and said softly, as if to himself,

“I got fired today.”

 “Oh really, Dennis? Are you really so self-obsessed that you’re moaning about your own problems while I’m dealing with _this?_ ” Dee swept her arm out to indicate the grisly scene.

 “Ok firstly, you made this my problem as well when you decided to turn our apartment _where I also live_ into a murder scene. Secondly, I’m just saying, I don’t have a job any more. Probably got no chance of finding another one either – I doubt they’re going to give me a great reference. And you hate your job.”

 “Yeah, so?” Dee worked at a pet store, where she spent most of her time cleaning out cages and getting bitten by hamsters. The only thing she loathed more than those furry little bastards were the children who came in to bang on the cages and yell until their parents bought one.

 “We’ve got no friends or family except Frank, who’s an asshole and isn’t even really related to us. Between us we’ve racked up more debt than most nations, and we live in a building so scummy that even the rats are crackheads.”

 “Yeah okay, our lives suck. Real fucking helpful, dickhead.”

 “Shut up, I’m not done. Yeah, you’re right, our lives suck. Would you care at all if you never saw this shithole city again? I wouldn’t.”

 Dee’s eyes widened as she caught up with his thinking.

“You’re saying we should skip town?”

 “Why not? Why stay here in this shitty apartment constantly looking over our shoulders for cops, when we could start new lives a thousand miles away?”

 Dee considered the suggestion for a while. She stared at Gary, slouched in the bathtub with one arm hanging over the side. He stared back with glazed eyes fixed and unblinking. She turned away from the corpse and glanced at her own pallid face in the mirror, pausing to lick a fingertip and daub a smudge of blood from her forehead.

 “Okay,” she said finally, “let’s do it.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Mac and Charlie were singing along with Aerosmith on the radio, Charlie trailing off into complicated harmonies, Mac less tuneful but making up for it in enthusiasm and volume. It wasn’t until they broke off to mime out a guitar solo that they noticed the crackle of their walkie-talkies beneath the blare of the music. Mac turned the radio down and they listened to the dispatcher.

“… ten thirty-one at the pet store on Jefferson… would the nearest available unit please attend…”

Mac’s eyes lit up – the pet store was half a mile down the road from where they were parked.

“Ten four!” he yelled into the scanner, pulling away from the kerb. “Me and Officer Kelly are on our way, ETA two minutes!”

“Uhhh…” their sergeant’s voice cut in over the radio, “I think Officer Martinez might be closer…”

“We’re literally on Jefferson now,” Charlie countered as the pet shop drew into sight.

The sergeant’s sigh was audible. “Okay fine, but don’t mess anything up. Please.”

Mac pulled over outside the pet store. As he and Charlie jumped out of the car they saw a dark green Range Rover at the end of the road turning off toward the highway, tyres squealing as it took the corner way too fast.

“Asshole SUV drivers,” Mac grunted, shaking his head.

The store was a scene of chaos. Glass tanks had been shattered and cages wrenched open, and customers cringed away from parrots flapping at their heads, children wailing as a snake took the opportunity to swallow a fat hamster, staff desperately sprinting around the store trying to corral rabbits and grab rodents.

Mac cleared his throat loudly. Nobody noticed him in the pandemonium.

“Hey!” Charlie shouted. A few heads turned. “Is the manager here?”

A harried-looking young woman stepped forward and introduced herself as the duty manager.

“What the hell happened here?” Mac asked, shuffling aside as a bearded dragon skittered past his boots.

“Dee Reynolds.” The young woman’s voice was hard and bitter.

“Who’s that?” Charlie asked.

“Well she _was_ my worst employee, up until this morning. She came in with some guy and told me she was quitting – not in those exact words, but I wouldn’t want to repeat the language she used – and then the two of them just went on this… this _rampage_ , breaking open all the cages… I don’t think there’s a single animal they didn’t let out. They even smashed the fish tanks.”

She pointed to the aquarium section, where the floor was flooded with gallons of water from the shattered tanks. Tropical fish of every colour flopped helplessly on the tiles as staff members dashed around collecting up the survivors into buckets, bags and spare tanks.

“They left just before you arrived,” the manager continued. “They were in some kind of SUV, dark green.”

Mac followed her to the office where she gave him Dee’s personnel file and as much information as she could recall about the man who’d been with her.

“Charlie,” he asked as they headed back to the car, “does the name Dee Reynolds sound familiar to you?”

“Well yeah, dude, the manager literally just told us about her.”

Mac sighed irritably. “No, I mean before then. I’m sure I recognise the name. Did we go to high school with a Dee Reynolds?”

“Hmm… I know there was a Dennis Reynolds. Remember him? You must do, you were totally obs-“

“Yeah,” Mac cut him off hastily, “I remember Dennis Reynolds. He had a sister, didn’t he? What was her name?”

“The Aluminium Monster. That big metal cage thing… she looked like a robot or something.” Charlie sounded almost admiring, like he thought this was a cool thing.

“I can’t remember what her real name was. Could have been Dee, I guess. Shall we go straight to the address and see if we can find her?”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t call Sergeant Gedney first? He won’t be happy if we go and arrest someone without checking in with him first.”

“Charlie, do any of the other officers have to check in constantly? No, because he trusts them. Let’s do this by ourselves and prove to the sarge that he can trust us too!”

Charlie wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t argue. He pulled a meatball sandwich from the glovebox, broke off a crumb of bread and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have a hamster in there?”

“What? No, dude!”

Mac glanced at him reproachfully.

“It’s a rat…” Charlie admitted. “I didn’t steal him! He was about to run out into the street anyway!”

He took the rat out of his pocket and let it scramble across his fingers. It was small and sleek, dappled black and white, nothing like the huge brown bastards that lurked in dumpsters. Mac shook his head.

“Goddammit, Charlie.”

They parked around the corner and approached the apartment building on foot. Mac curled his lip as he peered around at the graffiti, boarded windows and trash-strewn doorways.

“This place is even shittier than your building, bro.”

They let themselves in – if the front door even had a lock, it must be broken – and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, wrinkling their noses at the sour smell of piss and weed. When they reached apartment 403 Mac stepped forward and rapped smartly on the door.

“Deandra Reynolds?”

There was no answer. Mac knocked again.

“Miss Reynolds, we’re from the Philadelphia Police Department. Open up, please.”

Still nothing. The apartment sounded still and silent behind the closed door.

“Okay then…” Mac’s eyes sparkled gleefully as he took a step back. As soon as Charlie realised what he was thinking he leapt to stop him, but he was too late. Mac’s boot slammed into the door, which held steadfastly undamaged. He rebounded back, hopping with one foot still raised, and toppled over onto the filthy floor.

“Mac, what the fuck?” Charlie could almost feel the eyes on him as neighbours peered through the spyholes in their doors, and he was sure he could hear deadbolts sliding across every door in the hallway. He shifted in his uniform, intensely aware that it made him an instant enemy to the people here.

“There was – it must be some kind of reinforced – lemme try again…” Mac muttered as Charlie helped him to his feet.

“No way man! You can’t just go around breaking doors down without a warrant, you’ll get us both sacked!” He tugged at Mac’s arm and continued in a hushed voice, “Let’s just get out of here before we get stabbed, okay?”

“Fine, but only to go and get a warrant sorted! Then we’re coming straight back!” Mac declared as he let Charlie hurry him back towards the stairs.

~

 

On the other side of town, Dee and Dennis had parked at an isolated construction site to take a moment to celebrate their newfound freedom. They’d been to the liquor store with the cash Dee had swiped from the pet store’s till, and now they sat on the hood of the car and clinked together their bottles of fizzy Prosecco. The evening was drawing in now, and the sky was dusky pink with the afterglow of a blazing sunset.

“Cheers!” they said together, legs swinging against the bumper, minds whirring with possibilities now that they no longer cared about the cops looking for them.

“To creepy Gary!” Dee cackled, swigging from her bottle.

“To that stuck-up bitch Jenny and her shitty checkout job!” said Dennis.

“To all those fucking hamsters – be free!” Dee howled, and the twins collapsed in fits of giggles. They enjoyed the moment for a while, revelling in the childlike excitement neither of them had felt in years (maybe not since the first time they took a life, when they’d had an argument with some loser from their high school and ended up making it look like he’d offed himself). When they finally recovered, catching their breath and wiping their streaming eyes, they got back into the car and looked at one another apprehensively.

“So what do we do next?” Dee asked.

“Well, if we’re gonna go on the run we need money. How much do we have from the pet store?”

“After our liquor run?” Dee pulled the folded bills out of her pocket and flipped through them. “About a hundred bucks.”

“That’s it?”

Dee shrugged. “Not a lot of money to be made in rodents.”

“Right. Well, we need at least enough for gas and motels. I’m not sleeping in here with you.”

“And it’s gotta be cash,” Dee pointed out. “Where can we get a shitload of cash without too much risk of being arrested?”

“Rob a bank?” was Dennis’s immediate answer. Dee rolled her eyes.

“We don’t even know enough about banks to use them properly, let alone rob one.”

“I blame Frank and his weird distrust of banks for that. It’s ridiculous to be a grown adult and not even have a bank account, goddammit.”

Dee’s eyes widened. “That’s it! Jesus Christ Dennis, we know exactly where to find all the cash we need!”

Dennis caught on quickly. “Under Frank’s mattress!”

They headed for their childhood home with mixed feelings. Neither of them particularly wanted to revisit the place – their only visit since moving out had been when their mom died, and they hadn’t seen Frank since the funeral – but they were looking forward to taking away the money that their so-called father had always prioritised above his legal (if not biological) children.

Dennis parked on the long gravelled driveway and they both stared at the house for a long moment, steeling themselves to go inside. Their parents’ home stood three storeys tall and sprawled expansively in its three-acre plot. Its unlit windows glared down at the twins as they climbed out of the Range Rover and headed for the side door, stopping to unearth the spare key from beneath the same tub of azaleas where it had always lived.

They let themselves in and paused in tense silence, listening for movement or voices. Frank had never been home at this time on a weekday when they were kids, but they didn’t know what his schedule might be now. They couldn’t hear anything but still they were cautious – the house was big enough that there could be a whole crowd chattering in a distant room and they’d be none the wiser. They crept up the stairs and headed for the master bedroom.

When Dee pushed the door open, the first thing they noticed was the close, sweaty smell of moving bodies. The second thing they noticed was the low grunting sound interspersed with occasional murmurs and sighs. Dee tried to close the door again but the intrusion had already been noticed.

“Hey! Who the fuck is in my house?” Frank yelled from the bed. The slim brunette woman on top of him turned a disinterested glance towards the door and continued to ride him dutifully. He pushed her off and sat up, squinting through his glasses.

Dee and Dennis glanced at each other and shrugged. They pushed the door open again and entered the room, keeping their eyes averted from the sight of Frank wearing nothing but his socks.

“Hi Frank,” Dennis started awkwardly.

“Don’t hi me, what are you doing here?” Frank leaned over to his nightstand and grabbed a snub-nosed pistol. “I’m busy, get the fuck out.”

“Maybe you should ask your friend to leave,” Dee suggested. Dennis recognised the icy tone, the threat beneath her words like a riptide below the deceptive surface of a river.

“No. Get out of here, Deandra.” Frank waved the gun as if to shoo her away. He didn’t ask the naked woman to leave, but she had started pulling her clothes on when the gun appeared and now she pushed past the twins and hurried out of the door. She didn’t bother stopping to ask for her money.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Frank complained, swinging his stumpy legs out of the bed and getting up to fetch a robe. “She was my favourite. What do you two want, wandering around my house in the middle of the night?”

“It’s eight thirty in the evening, Frank.”

“Is it? Shit… what day?”

“Thursday.”

“Oh, that’s alright then.” Frank tied the robe across his waist, finally covering up his junk much to Dennis and Dee’s relief.

“We’re leaving town,” Dennis continued in answer to the original question. “We need some cash.”

Frank chuckled in a damp wheeze. “Fuck off.”

He had left the pistol on the bed when he got up, and now Dee was nonchalantly drifting across to stand between him and the bed. Dennis shifted his weight, getting ready to spring.

“Are you sure you won’t just lend us some money?” he asked, generously allowing Frank a chance to avert his fate. “We’re in a bit of trouble, and it would really help.”

“You’re always in trouble, children. I didn’t get where I am today by helping people out when they get themselves in a mess. Get out of my house, I won’t tell you again.”

Dennis and Dee fell smoothly into their usual roles, working together with the effortless synchronisation of the perfectly rehearsed. Dennis lunged forward to wrap his hands around Frank’s fat little neck while Dee locked her wiry arms through his elbows from behind. Trapped and helpless, Frank spluttered and kicked at Dennis’s shins as his face turned from crimson to purple. Dennis was grinning, lips drawn back to expose too many teeth as he squeezed the life out of the closest thing he had to a father. He felt Frank’s pulse hammering frantic beneath his fingers. It slowed as he began to slump in Dee’s grasp, and finally stuttered to a halt. Dennis kept his white-knuckled grip for a long moment, only releasing it when his hands began to cramp painfully. Dee stepped back and let Frank’s body hit the ground with a thump.

“ _Fuck you!_ ” she snarled suddenly, kicking the body hard - twice, three times, four. Her converse sneakers bounced against his flabby gut while Dennis looked on with clouded, unseeing eyes.

He was far away, lost in his own mind as so often happened when he had watched the life flicker out of someone at his hands. Control over life and death was the ultimate power, one he longed for and feared in equal measure, and exercising this power made him feel like he was floating far above the meagre human race, unworldly and entirely disconnected from the petty concerns of his physical being. Sometimes it took him a long time to find his way back. Occasionally Dee would notice and wrap her arms around him, pinning his body against hers tightly enough to hold the drifting pieces together, lending him the warmth of her skin and her beating heart until he could feel his own.

Today wasn’t one of those times. When Dee had finished attacking the corpse, she turned her attention to the bed and heaved the mattress up to look underneath.

“There’s nothing here… where else would he keep it?” When Dennis didn’t reply, she turned to look at him and sighed. “Dennis! C’mon man, we don’t have time for this today.”

She grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him a little. His eyes remained vacant and unfocused.

“Earth to Dennis! Hey!”

A sudden flare of pain across the side of Dennis’s face snapped him back to reality. He blinked at the sight of Dee rubbing her knuckles and swearing.

“Jesus Christ Dennis, your cheekbones are made of concrete or something. Come on, help me find the cash.”

Too dazed to even question why she’d just punched him, Dennis obediently started searching the room with his sister. They found the cash stuffed into a couple of shoeboxes at the top of the wardrobe.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Dennis grumbled as Dee examined the stash.

“Dennis, each of these bundles is 10k. There’s gotta be more than a hundred thousand dollars in here!”

They piled the cash into a sturdy holdall and threw the pistol in as well. Dennis took the Rolex from Frank’s cold wrist and strapped it around his own, admiring it in the lamplight. Dee found their mom’s pearl necklace stuffed in the back of a drawer and Dennis helped her to fasten it around her neck. 

“C’mon then,” Dee said when they’d finished claiming the inheritance they were owed. “There’s one more thing I want to do before we leave town.” 

She hefted the holdall over her shoulder and the Reynolds twins waved goodbye to the old man’s corpse and left their childhood home for the last time.


	3. Chapter 3

“I can’t believe he just blew us off like that!”

 “I know man. ‘Too busy with the serial killer thing’ my ass. We worked hard on this!”

 “And you know what – you know what’s gonna happen, don’t you? When they do finally get the warrant processed, it’ll just _happen_ to be a day when we’re not in, and someone else’ll get all the credit!”

 “Martinez and Callaghan, I bet. They get all the good arrests.”

 Charlie let his rat clamber down his sleeve and onto the bar, where it found a pool of spilled beer and set about lapping it up in tiny slurps. If the bartender noticed, he didn’t seem to care. Mac and Charlie liked this pub because the beer was cheap and the staff were more interested in fighting amongst themselves than snooping on their customers’ conversations – Paddy’s was the ideal place for two off-duty cops to complain about work without being overheard.

After five or six beers they finally got bored of grumbling about the unfairness of being overlooked at work and moved on to other topics. Mac wanted Charlie to go and see the new Thundergun movie with him and Charlie tried to come up with an excuse to avoid going – he loved the action series as much as anyone but he always felt uncomfortable having to pretend not to notice Mac’s poorly concealed excitement over the male lead. He’d heard there was actual dong in the new movie and there was no way he wanted to be privy to Mac’s reaction to that. It wouldn’t even be awkward if Mac would just admit that he thought the dude was hot, but Charlie knew that would never happen.

“Hey man, you know what we should do?” said Charlie, trying to draw Mac’s attention away from the Thundergun conversation.

“What?”

“Let’s go out to the park by the high school where we used to hang out when we were kids.”

Mac scoffed. “Dude, that was like ten years ago. We’re adults now, we don’t need to get wasted in parks any more.”

“Yeah, but we had some great times there. It’s whadya call it, neurotic.”

“Nostalgic?”

“That’s it. Remember how we used to cut class and go and get high on that swing set, and you’d slick your hair back and put on two colognes in case Dennis Reynolds came over to buy from you – I’ve been thinking about that place since you mentioned him earlier.”

“I didn’t mention him, you did. And the cologne and shit was obviously for the chicks I used to sell to, not for him.”

“Yeah, right, sorry. Anyway, let’s go over there and be nostalgic, yeah?”

Charlie pulled something from the hip pocket of his jeans as he spoke and waved it between two fingers. Mac’s eyes widened and he glanced around at the almost empty bar before leaning forward to hiss,

” _Dude!_ Sarge will kill you if you swiped that from the evidence room!”

“Relax,” Charlie grinned, slipping the ziplock bag back into his pocket. “I got it from that C.I. they used on the Reeves case.”

Mac rolled his eyes and followed Charlie out of the bar. They stumbled through the sleeping city, bumping against one another and laughing as the cold night air made them suddenly feel the full effects of the beer.   It was a short walk from the bar to their old high school, and soon they were approaching the squat, familiar building with a combination of nostalgia and relief at never needing to go inside again.

They made their way along the side of the building, past the car park and the science block, heading for the playground that overlooked the football field. They’d spent countless hours there as teenagers, whiling away long afternoons on the rusty swing set with a joint and a fifth of stolen whisky, watching their more assiduous classmates pelting up and down the football field.

They were just passing the science block when the sound of breaking glass stopped them both in their tracks. Creeping forward to peer around the corner of the building, they saw a pair of skinny legs disappearing through a smashed window.

“C’mon, dude,” Mac hissed, pulling at Charlie’s sleeve. “Let’s get out of here before the night shift turn up.”

“Sshh!” Charlie tugged his arm away from his friend’s grasp and pointed to a car abandoned haphazardly on the sidewalk on the other side of the building. “Look!”

It was a dark green Range Rover.

“Ohhh, shit!” Mac breathed.

“Don’t need a warrant now,” Charlie added with a grin.

They crouched below the level of the windowsills and headed for the entry point, grabbing at one another’s shoulders for balance as they hurried along doubled-over. Mac grabbed his wallet from his pocket, fumbling for his police ID and wishing he had his gun. When they reached the place where shards of glass littered the ground, Charlie brought his head up for a quick look through the window before ducking again.

“It’s just a corridor, I can’t see anyone there,” he whispered.

“Let’s go in and have a look around. On my count – one… two… three!”

Together they leapt up, and the person diving out of the window slammed bodily into them with a shriek. Caught off balance and surprised, Charlie, Mac and the unknown intruder were all knocked to the tarmac.

“Get off me!”

Mac held on grimly to the stranger’s arms as they kicked and swore. He couldn’t see a face under the dark hoodie but from the shrill voice it seemed to be a woman.

“Philadelphia PD! Do you have permission to be on these premises?” he snapped.

“Dee?” Another face had appeared at the window. “What the fuck? Who are these people?” It was a man, also dressed in a black hoody, and he was holding a can of gasoline.

“Please exit the building, sir!” Charlie searched his pockets for his ID, a gun or even a flashlight, but all he found was a lighter, a handful of crumpled bills and an eighth of weed. The man was already backing away from the window, preparing to bolt. Charlie threw himself over the sill, swearing as a jagged spur of glass ripped the palm of his hand, and sprinted after the trespasser as he fled through the dark hallways.

“Let go of me, dickhead!” yelled the woman in Mac’s grasp.

“Are you Deandra Reynolds?”

She responded with a scream of wordless rage and kicked his shins viciously, but he kept his grip.

“The guy in there called you Dee. If you are Deandra Reynolds of 403 Sunny Heights, then I’m placing you under arrest on suspicion of…”

“I didn’t do it!” she yelled. “It was self defence!”

“… and criminal damage to… self defence? What was?”

 _Shit._ Dee stopped struggling and clamped her mouth shut. _Don’t say anything else._ At that moment Charlie reappeared, red-faced and out of breath. He stood at the broken window, hands raised level with his face, palms outwards. Blood trickled down his arm from the gash in one hand.

“Did you get him?” asked Mac.

“Not exactly…” Charlie lurched aside as though pushed, and Mac saw the handgun pressed against his ribs.

“Dennis!” Dee took advantage of the distraction to struggle away from Mac and produced a gun of her own from her waistband.

Dennis got Charlie to climb out of the window and then followed, keeping his aim steady as he did. Mac and Charlie huddled together in the crosshairs of the armed twins.

“Lower your weapons now!” Mac tried, his voice squeakier than he’d like. “We are office…”

Charlie elbowed him – he didn’t think telling these people they were police officers was going to do them any good – but it was pointless.

“They’re cops, Dennis. Philly PD, this one said.”

“Dennis?” Mac’s eyebrows shot up as he finally made the connection. “Dennis Reynolds?”

“Shut up,” Dennis scowled, wondering how this cop knew his name. “Dee, see if they’re armed.”

Dennis kept his gun trained on them while Dee patted them down and emptied their pockets.

“It’s me, Mac. Ronnie the rat, remember?” Mac babbled on as Dee helped herself to his wallet and keys. “From high school?” He motioned towards the school that slumbered in darkness behind them.

Dennis’s face showed no flicker of recognition. He peered over Dee’s shoulder at the contents of their pockets.

“Looks like this one’s telling the truth – he’s a police officer. I can’t find any police ID for this other guy though, and he’s got weed. Neither of them have guns either,” Dee said.

“We’re off duty,” Charlie explained. He reached to grab his weed back, and Dennis pulled back the hammer and stared him down until Charlie thought better of it.

“You don’t have your ID on you?” Mac hissed.

“Why would I? I didn’t expect to be robbed at fucking gunpoint!” Charlie muttered back.

“Oh, this isn’t a robbery. It’s a kidnapping.”

“What?”

“What?!” Dee glared at Dennis – he could’ve at least given her a heads up before deciding they were going to kidnap a pair of cops.

“Hostages, Dee! If these guys really are cops – which I doubt, by the way – then if their buddies catch up with us, all we have to do is threaten to kill them and we can demand whatever we want!”

“I really don’t think…” Charlie began, and Mac nudged him into silence. He knew as well as Charlie did that they were probably the only people the department would actually be glad to lose, but he didn’t think it would improve their position to tell Dennis that.

After some angry whispering amongst themselves, the twins seemed to have worked out a plan. Dee covered the two officers with her pistol while Dennis fetched some zip ties from the car, then they bound Mac and Charlie’s wrists behind their backs and loaded them into the back seat. With Dennis behind the wheel Dee took up position in the passenger seat, twisting round to keep an eye on the hostages and keeping her gun ready all the while. Behind them, smoke was beginning to rise from the grim institutional cluster of school buildings.

“Okay then,” Dennis said cheerfully when they were all in the Range Rover. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m beat. Shall we go find a motel?”                                    

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is broken up into so many short pointless chapters, sorry.

Dennis drove for a couple of hours, getting them well outside the city limits before he started looking for a motel. They’d stayed in Philly for too long after their decision to run, and it had nearly gotten them caught. He blamed Dee for this, with her insistence on burning down the school before they left. He guessed she wanted revenge for the four miserable years of torment she had spent there. He wouldn’t know anything about that himself, having been at the opposite end of the social scale to poor Dee, but he’d generously agreed to help her destroy the place if it would make her feel better.

 He glanced in the rearview mirror at the two men huddled uncomfortably in the back seat. Ronnie the rat, a fucking cop. It kind of made sense really, he supposed – what better career for a born tattle-tale? He hadn’t recognised his high school acquaintance at first. The kid had been puny back in school, a weedy little streak of piss with lank hair falling past his ears and ill-fitting thrift store clothes. Dennis was surprised at how tall he’d become – he must have had a hell of a growth spurt after graduation – and grudgingly impressed with the broad shoulders and the biceps that swelled gently under his shirtsleeves. As soon as Ronnie (Mac – he remembered now, Dennis had helped him come up with the new nickname in junior year) had identified himself, Dennis had immediately recognised the other guy with him as well. Charlie hadn’t changed so much – he was still a small guy, and still had that permanently scruffy look about him. Dennis remembered that Charlie’s mom had always ensured her son had nice, presentable clothes to wear, and that somehow after five minutes on Charlie they always ended up looking worse than Mac’s ragged second-or-third hand outfits. Even his hair was the same style, and Dennis wondered if his mom still cut it for him. Dennis still highly doubted Charlie’s claim that he was also a police officer – surely there was no way in hell anyone would ever trust this catastrophe of a boy with a firearm.

 Signs for a rest station and motel began to appear, and soon Dennis was slowing down and flicking on the Range Rover’s blinker as he turned off the highway and into the parking lot.

 “Here we are!” he sang out with a grin. He was the only one smiling. He couldn’t help it – being on the run, having hostages helpless in his control, it was making his blood fizz in his veins. He felt alive the way he normally only did when someone was taking their last breath at his hands.

 Dennis and Dee got out of the car and left their hostages shut inside while they talked through their plan.

 “We’ll take it in turns to sleep so that one of us is always keeping an eye on them,” Dennis decided.

 “You can take the first shift then, I’m going to bed.”

 Dennis was fine with this. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep if he tried. They checked in to a twin room and Dee climbed into bed fully clothed while Dennis took a seat at the small dining table, laying his gun down pointedly on the tabletop. Mac and Charlie perched awkwardly on the edge of the unoccupied bed.

 Mac spoke hesitantly.

 “So, uh… you guys realise you’re not going to have cops tracking you down just for trashing a pet store, right? Or for the high school. You don’t need to go full Jesse James over this.”

 Dennis laughed out loud at this, and even Dee sniggered into her pillow.

 “You think _that’s_ what’s going on here? Jesus Christ.” Dennis shook his head with a grin.

 “That’s all we know about, dude,” Charlie pointed out. “We can keep it that way if you want. We’d be laughed out of the station if we tried to get our boss to chase you.”

 Dennis smiled indulgently – it was nice that his hostages were making an effort to persuade him to release them, even if their attempts were pretty lame.

 “No,” he mused, dragging out a long pause, “I think I’d rather you knew what my sister and I are capable of.”

 He reached into a paper grocery bag, smirking as his captives flinched, and pulled out a local newspaper. The front page story was about the recent murder and whether it was the work of a serial killer, and he tapped a fingertip against the print with a smirk. Mac stared for a moment and then breathed a mirthless laugh.

 “No way, man. High school might have been a long time ago, but I knew you. I know you. You’re not some psycho killer.”

 Rage flashed behind Dennis’s eyes, stormclouds illuminated by a ripple of sheet lightning, but it quickly passed to leave his blue eyes as blank and cold as ever. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, brought up the picture gallery and held it out for inspection.

 “You don’t know shit.” He watched the colour drain from Mac and Charlie’s faces as he took them through a quick slideshow of his souvenir photos. Glassy eyes, purple lips, lolling tongues. Some of the victims looked familiar to the two cops – they’d seen their faces pinned to corkboards in the detectives’ conference room at work. Mac felt sick, but he forced the horror to the back of his mind. The fear and the need to get as far away from the Reynolds twins as possible were more pressing.

 “You can’t just drag us across the country with you,” he said when he trusted his voice to remain steady. Dee growled at the noise and rolled over, and he lowered his voice. “We’ll slow you down – we’re more likely to get you caught than anything else.”

 “Well if you think killing you would be a better option…” Dennis let one hand drop idly to his gun. Mac gave a smothered yelp.

 “No! That’s not what I’m saying. I just think there must be a better way for you to use this situation to your advantage, y’know?”

 “Oh yeah? Go on then, fill me in.” Dennis smirked as the dark haired cop stammered and flushed. He knew he’d been bullshitting.

 “We can lead them away from you,” Charlie piped up. “We’ll feed our bosses some made up sightings, let you know if they’re getting too close. On Law and Order they always say the criminals track the investigation… we can do that for you.”

 Mac and Dennis both stared at him for a moment in open surprise, before Dennis sat back and folded his arms dismissively.

 “And let you lead them straight to us the moment our backs are turned? No way.”

 “Seriously, I think you’re overestimating our loyalty to the department here dude.” Charlie leaned forward, elbows on his knees, voice low. “Being the lowest ranking officers in the precinct doesn’t come with a lot of job satisfaction.”

 Mac gave his colleague a sideways glance, swallowed and then nodded. “Totally. We’re way under-appreciated there – we got demoted to traffic duty while the feds are in town.”

 Dee shushed them again and pulled the blankets over her head, and the men fell silent. Dennis stretched and rocked his chair back on two legs, turning the pistol over in his pale hands. Charlie curled up on the bed behind Mac and dozed, demonstrating the remarkable skill he shared with feral cats capable of napping in any situation. Mac passed the time by flicking through the little New Testament bible from the nightstand. He tried to be comforted by God’s word, but just felt guilty when his fear remained unyielding.

 For what felt like hours Mac stared at the tissue-thin pages, not taking in the words, just listening to the steady rise and fall of Charlie’s breathing beside him and waiting for the night to pass. Eventually he glanced up – he hadn’t heard Dennis stir in a while and he had begun to entertain the hope that their captor may have fallen asleep at his post – but those icy blue eyes stared back at him just as alert as ever. Mac quickly dropped eye contact and turned his face down to the bible once again.

 “How did you end up being a cop, anyway?” Dennis’s voice, though barely above a whisper, seemed deafening to Mac as he flinched, startled. “Kind of an unexpected career move for a drug dealer, no?”

 “Uh, yeah, I guess,” Mac kept his eyes downturned, studying the damp marks his sweating fingers left on the page. “Me and Charlie joined together, we thought it would be cool…”

He shook his head, inexplicably embarrassed in front of his high school friend (his _psycho killer_ high school friend, he reminded himself). Then something occurred to him.

“I thought you didn’t remember us?”

 “I recognised you straight away, Ronnie.” A smile played around the edges of Dennis’s lips. Mac’s jaw clenched reflexively at the sound of his childhood name.

 “Anyway, how did _you_ end up being a… well…” Mac faltered.

 “A serial killer?”

 Mac’s flinch was almost visible, and Dennis laughed softly.

 “I don’t know, man. Dee and I sort of got into it by accident, and there’s just – there’s nothing like it. Have you ever killed anyone, Mac? Line of duty type thing?”

 “No.” If the captain had his way, Officers McDonald and Kelly wouldn’t even have guns.

 “Well, don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, man.” Dennis grinned.

 He drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, placed one between his lips and proffered the pack towards his hostage. Mac raised his hand to wave away the offer unthinkingly, then changed his mind and took one. He moved over to the table, taking the seat opposite Dennis, and leaned over towards the flame of the lighter Dennis held out to him.

 “How many?” Mac asked, unnerved by his own boldness.

 “Hmm?”

 “How many people have you…?”

 “Oh.” Dennis thought for a moment, counting unspoken names on his fingers in silence. “Six, personally. Dee did a seventh one without me.”

 “The feds have only been looking at four including Stevens.”

 “They’ll be looking at another two now.” Dennis laughed at Mac’s panicked expression. “Not you two. A couple of guys from yesterday and last night. They should be found soon, if they haven’t been already. And then there was one years ago, just after we graduated actually, but we passed that one off as a suicide.”

 “Not Dooley?”

 “Oh yeah, you knew him didn’t you? I forget you hung out with such a lame crowd. Yeah, he was an asshole.”

 “We thought… they said he hung himself…”

 “It was fucking hard work getting him up there, let me tell you. D’you think bird-brain over there helped? No, it was all on me. Surprised I didn’t give myself a hernia.”

 Mac could feel himself staring, told himself to stop gawping, to lower his eyes like animals are meant to when they don’t want a fight, but he couldn’t look away from Dennis’s eyes. They were as brilliant blue as they had been ten years ago, with a brittle gleam at surface level and nothing but a concrete stare beyond that. No trace of warmth, not even a hot flash of anger or madness. Mac thought about that saying, that the eyes are windows to the soul, and shuddered.

 They smoked in silence after that. Mac leaned forward over the table, head pillowed on his forearms, and eventually he slept.


End file.
